Ivy

The Rock

Our silent contemplation of nature couldn’t last forever. I felt Ivy shift on the covers and then she got up; she was already over at the fireplace before I sat up. I still didn’t entirely trust my muscles to work properly.

She had a rake in the fire and was spreading the ashes out. “To help them cool faster,” she explained. “I need to make sure that the fire’s all the way out before I leave, I don’t want it flaring up and burning down the cabin or the forest.”

“I suppose that’s one advantage to a more modern furnace, you can just turn it off.”

“Sure, and then a chipmunk gnaws a hole in the gas supply hose, and then next time you come to the house, boom.”

“That can happen?”

“It’s unlikely, but it could. More to the point, unless I just had those unvented wall stoves, I’d need to have some electrical supply to run the house. This is much simple, as long as I take precautions.” She held her hand over the coals. “Still plenty warm, I’ll check again after we eat lunch—if you’re hungry.”

By way of an answer, my stomach growled.

Ivy walked back over and held out her hand. I grabbed it and she pulled me up. “So, is it Spamwiches again?”

“Leftovers,” she said. “What’s left of the squirrel stew, the berries and greens we foraged yesterday, bread.”

“That your usual Sunday fare?”

“Depends on what I find,” she said. “I got enough squirrels to last me a couple of days, and if you’re still hungry we can forage more, maybe eat on the go. I do that sometimes. If it hadn’t been raining this morning—”

“That’s why you keep staples.”

She nodded and opened the cooler, getting out the squirrel stew.

I reached into the basket where the rest of the greens and berries were and started setting them on a plate. “When you’re not luring nearly minimum-wage workers to your cabin for a weekend of fun, you go up alone, yeah?”

Ivy shrugged. “It’s a nice change from my normal work. Nicer if I have a partner, but I can keep myself company with my own thoughts. And sometimes I choose poorly and wind up with some useless slag who thinks too much of himself, someone’s who’s too good to do work or get dirty.”

I had an image of those poor unfortunates being led off her land by gunpoint and doing the walk of shame back to civilization—a long walk, to be sure.

She set out two plates and spooned half the remaining squirrel stew on each. She could have reheated it on the stove, but that would have been another pot to clean.

The stew wasn’t as good cold, especially since I was chilly. I thought about getting the blanket and wearing it like a cape, although it felt like it would be wimpy.

I could put my clothes back on—nothing was stopping me.

As I watched her eat, it flashed across my mind that she could try a female partner.

Why not? This was the modern age; I saw plenty of female contractors and carpenters and hobbyists at the store, and I wasn’t so ignorant to think that only a man could please a woman. Or it might have just been lesbian fantasies suddenly making themselves known. Either way, I wasn’t going to bring it up.

Instead: “The rain’s stopped.” I tilted my head to the outside. “Maybe we can split some more wood?”

She paused, the fork halfway to her mouth.

“It’s honest work.”

“Doesn’t get you in my pants.”

“You’re not wearing pants.”

“If I was.”

“You’d be just as sexy.” That wasn’t flattery, that was true.

Ivy snorted. “You think you’re gonna earn an extra day by helping me split more firewood for the winter?”

“Not like I have a job anymore.”

“Fair point.” Ivy leaned over and ran a finger across my chin. “If I was to offer you a chance to stay here and split wood or dig more post-holes, let you live here doing things for me and I only come up on weekends ‘cause I still have a job, would you do it?”

“I might. It’s different up here.”

“I don’t know if it would be the same for you if it was all the time.”

“Maybe not, but a weekend isn’t long enough.”

Not just a weekend with her, although that was important. But here, out in the woods, in the solitude, away from the city, surrounded by the beauty of nature. I tried to imagine what her cabin would look like through the year, during autumn as the trees changed colors or later on when it was chilly, when the wood smoke lingered; the winter with everything under a blanket of snow, all the vibrant songs of the forest stilled at least temporarily. Then the spring, with the smell of newness in the air, flowers and buds, all the animals that had gone for the winter coming back, bringing the forest back to life.

I looked back down at my food, at the little bit of stew remaining, the greens and the shiny berries. It was the memories of the weekend on a couple of plates. It was hard to think that we’d be leaving soon—I didn’t want to think that. I wanted every last moment at her cabin to last forever, even though I knew it couldn’t.

•••

Ivy had her kettle on, so there’d be some hot water to wash the plates. There was a different kind of thinking and planning that went into a cabin like this. She had all the modern conveniences of home that she wanted—heat, water, lights, a shower—they just took longer to get going.

She didn’t have to ask me to do the dishes; once I’d cleaned my plate I walked over to the sink and poured in some boiling water, then added cold water until it was a comfortable temperature.

I’d never consciously thought about the fact that the countertop was at crotch level, nor that I had a habit of leaning against the counter as I washed dishes. Not until my dick brushed up against it, anyway—the dishwater was hot, the counter was not.

Ivy chuckled when I jerked back. “Bet you wish you didn’t have your dick sticking out, huh?”

“It gets too cold, and I’ll just have to put it somewhere warm.”

“Don’t think about that too much,” she warned me. “You get hard, you’re gonna have a lot more trouble with the dishes.”

Then, to prove she didn’t care about my wellbeing at all, she came up behind me, pressed her breasts against my back, and rubbed her hand down my butt, clenching a cheek and squeezing, her fingertip just tickling my gooch.

“You’re going to have to try harder if you want to get a rise out of me.” Not much harder, I could already feel the first stirrings of arousal.

“If I distract you too much, you might drop a dish and I don’t want that,” she said. “Once you’re done maybe I’ll see if I can seduce you one more time.”

“You won’t have to work very hard at it.” I set the last dish in the drying rack and started scrubbing the stew container.

“I saw that look in your eyes.” She looked out the window. “If I told you right now that we could have sex one more time, or we could walk together in the woods one more time, which would you choose?”

“That’s not a fair choice and you know it.” I could feel her grinning behind me. “It’s not raining anymore.”

“Nope.”

I pulled the plug on the sink and started drying the dishes as the water ran out. Each time I finished one, I passed it to Ivy to put away.

•••

She didn’t warn me that water collected on the top of the door, and I got an unexpected cold shower as I stepped out.

It was still gloomy overhead, although everything smelled fresh. There was a word for that, for the after-rain smell. I could see clear sky off in the distance, but it was impossible to judge how far away it was.

The birds had already come back out, and as the two of us stood together just outside her cabin, I thought about our ancient ancestors huddling in their huts during a storm and then coming outside once it was done to see what the landscape was like.

Did they ever fear that a big storm might wash everything away? Weather phenomena wouldn’t have been as well understood back then, and certainly they couldn’t have predicted anything more than a few hours in the future. Meanwhile I had my cell phone and got weather updates whenever I wanted.

My hand went down to my thigh where there was no cellphone. There hadn’t been one since Friday, and I realized that I hadn’t checked it at all since I’d quit work. Normally, that would have made me anxious, but right now I was glad it was gone.

Ivy gave me a gentle prod, and the two of us began walking, first down along the path towards her outhouse, and then into the woods. Raindrops still dripped off the leaves of the trees.

I thought we were going to revisit the hunting trail, but we didn’t. There was a different side-trail, another animal path. It twisted along the edge of a ridgeline, the same hill that her house was built on.

•••

The forest looked different after the rain. Even in the muted, overcast light, leaves were glossy and glistening, and yet I could also see places where the rain hadn’t landed—dry bark on some of the trees, clear areas of the path.

I didn’t know if I needed to be silent. Ivy hadn’t said that I should be, since we weren’t hunting.

But I was silent. I heard the near-constant dripping of water, the memory of rain. I heard birds chirping and distant frogs croaking and the rattle of leaves as the gusts that followed the storm shook the trees.

I looked around in the woods. Now that we weren’t hunting for food, I didn’t have to keep my eyes peeled in the canopy above, I could watch the forest floor.

I never really thought of flowers in forests but there were plenty, white and yellow mostly. Already, bees were darting around them, hunting for nectar.

Chipmunks ran with their tails raised, darting across the deadfall or the forest floor. Branches and trees lay where they’d fallen, covered in lichen and fungus, rotting back into the soil to begin the cycle anew.

I watched Ivy. It was easy to watch her butt and her tail or her breasts when she twisted around my way; it was more rewarding to study the complete package. The way her muscles moved as she walked, her deliberate stride. She wasn’t looking around in the woods like I was. For her, it was all familiar territory. Even though she wasn't of Earth, I was the stranger here. And yet, I was starting to understand it, to become one with it, to learn what I needed to look at and what I didn’t, to feel with all my senses.

Ivy might not have been looking around like I was, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t paying attention. She stopped abruptly in the middle of the path and held her hand out, a clear signal.

She didn’t point, so I followed her eyes. There on the trail in front of us was a fox, its head down amongst the forest grass.

Either it hadn’t spotted us yet, or it didn’t consider us a threat.

As I watched, it brought its head up and focused its ears in our direction; I saw a glint of light reflecting off a drop of water on its chin.

It was sniffing the air, searching for our scent before it ran. We were downwind of it, so it wasn't going to get an answer that way.

How good was fox eyesight, anyway? I didn't know and now was not the time to ask Ivy. Did we blend in better because we were nude? Would clothes have seemed out of place, and therefore a thing to be feared?

Or maybe it just didn’t see that many humans and didn’t consider us a threat. There were places where humans were rare enough that the animals hadn’t learned to be wary.

And then the thought occurred to me that a fox was a predator, and maybe I was the fool for standing there. Maybe it was thinking of attacking us, maybe it would have if we'd gotten closer. I wasn't sure if a fox could kill a human—or a minotauress.

How fast could a fox run? I had to assume it was faster than me. We didn't have any weapons, so if the fox was aggressive, we might be in trouble.

There were plenty of sturdy trees we could climb—if Ivy could climb. It’d been a long time since I climbed a tree, and I remembered feet being important in the process, although as I reflected on it, I’d been wearing shoes when I’d climbed trees, which would have put me on par with hooves.

Also, could foxes climb trees? I knew that bears could, that climbing a tree wasn't a good way to get away from them.

It was a moot point; the fox turned its tail and bounded away across the grass and then into the woods.

“Usually don't see them that close,” Ivy said. “Foxes don't like being seen.”

“They're not dangerous, are they? It wasn't going to attack us, was it?”

Ivy shook her head. “Maybe if it was desparate, if we cornered a mom with her kits, but otherwise they'd rather just avoid the two-leggers.

•••

As the land rose, the deciduous forest started to thin out, giving way to pines. The soil under my feet felt different, drier and sandier—something I never would have noticed while wearing shoes.

It was rocker, too. I could see dark rocks poking up in clear spots, or sometimes just sitting there between the trees—the pine trees shaded the floor and covered it in a carpet of needles where nothing grew, both shading the sun and yet giving me a better view of the forest floor.

Up ahead, I could see where the trees stopped. I couldn’t tell what was beyond them. A swamp? A pond? A sheer cliff?

At this point, nothing would have surprised me.

The trees gave way to an open meadow which was nearly circular. At first, I almost could imagine it as an ancient meteor crater, the small rocks littered around maybe being ejecta.

There was no way it could be; I wasn’t an expert on Michigan geology, but I knew that glaciers had scraped everything off the top of Michigan down to pre-dinosaur times. Therefore, this couldn’t be an ancient meteor crater, and I felt as if it had been more recent than the last Ice Age, I would have known about it.

Probably, the sandy rocky soil was a bad place for trees to grow. Or else it was a leftover relic from the logging days. maybe a foundation or something. None of the rocks looked worked, though, and who would have scattered rocks around after tearing down an old building?

Did it matter why it had come to be? It was here now, and it was pretty.

The trail continued, but it was more subtle than any of the game trails through the woods. I didn’t notice it at first, just followed Ivy along as she made her way through the wild grasses.

The path led to a big black rock, an improbable boulder just jutting out of the sandy soil. It was smooth, almost like a river rock, although I couldn't imagine what kind of flood might have carried it here.

“That’s my sunning rock,” Ivy said. “The sun heats it up, and it stays warm a long time, well into the night. I’m not the only one who likes it: I’ve seen a fox dozing on it a couple times, maybe that same one that we just saw.”

“Did you bring it here?” That was a dumb question. As unlikely as it was that it had appeared here naturally, it was even less likely that she’d helicoptered it in or somehow gotten it between the trees.

“It was here when I got the land.” She hopped up onto the rock, and then started sliding her way across it. “Go ahead, it’s big enough for two.”

I sat down on it. It was still cool to the touch, damp with rain, but I could imagine it would have felt amazing after a day of full sun.

“I’m not a geologist,” she said as I settled in next to her. “But I think this place is a covered-over kame, and I think this rock was carried here from Canada. None of the big rocks here are like any of the other rocks I’ve seen around, and it looks like ones I’ve seen in pictures.”

“Did you know it was here?”

“I didn’t at first. After I bought the land, before I started working on the cabin, I walked the property, camped out in the woods, just so I could find the right place to build and to see what I had to work with.”

“And you found this?”

“Not right away, there wasn’t anything useful I was expecting to find in the pines, and I wasn’t going to build anything here, on account of it being too close to the neighbor’s property.”

“How close?”

She pointed to the trees to the east. “Three, four trees in, or thereabouts. There’s an old fence, plus a lot of no trespassing signs—it’s not hard to find.”

“He hasn’t been spying on you, has he? While you’re sunning on your rock?”

“Would it matter if he was?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“As long as he stays on his side,” she said. “Depending on where they set up and where I do, sometimes I’ll see hunters in the fall. I’m sure they see me, too.”

“And as you’ve already demonstrated, this is your normal hunting attire?”

“If it’s real cold, I’ll put on a hoodie or a jacket. I’ve got enough fur on my legs to keep me warm in almost anything.”

“If nothing else, they might get so distracted admiring you, they’ll let a deer slip by and then you can get it.”

Ivy snorted. “As if they need more distractions. It’s not as bad up here as some places, but a lot of hunters are looking for bucks, so they’ll have a nice trophy for their wall. You can’t eat antlers, there’s no sense in letting a good deer go by in the hopes of getting a shot at a big buck later on. Hobbyists who don’t appreciate actual hunting, who won’t take a squirrel for food.”

“There is the cost of ammo and gear,” I reminded her. “Maybe less so in your case, but you still need a gun.”

“Fifty cents a round for my squirrel gun, works out to about a dollar a pound with a little work.”

“And if you’re a good shot.”

“True. It took a while to get used to shooting a gun, I wasn’t always all that accurate.” She hopped on the rock and slid up it, getting herself into a comfortable spot.

“We can’t stay here long enough to watch the sun set and the stars come out. I should have brought you here Friday night but I didn’t know how you’d do in the woods.”

I still didn’t know . . . I had an idea she wouldn’t have bothered with a flashlight or a lantern, and we would have been making our way back to the cabin in the dark. Not a problem for her, but I wasn’t sure I could make it on anything less than a clear sky and a full moon.

I wanted to tell her that we could do it next time, but I was already almost certain that there would be no next time, that this was all I was going to get, and to speak it aloud would put the nail in the coffin.

There was little point in worrying about an unknowable future, I could do that on Monday. For now, I’d stay in the present. I sat down on the rock and started scooting up next to her.

The stone was smooth, still damp from the rain, and it felt weird under my bare ass as I scooted up it. Just when I thought I’d gotten used to new sensations, another one came along.

•••

Once I’d settled in, I scanned the pine trees, and didn’t see anything. No flash of light off a pair of binoculars, or—

“Just lie back and let the sky take your worries,” Ivy said. “Focus in on yourself, let the world slip away. Be one with the rock.”

I settled down on the rock as she folded her arms across her stomach. For some reason I felt more vulnerable than I had all weekend. Maybe it was the fact that I was lying naked on an ancient rock, with no cover for hundreds of feet in any direction.

Never mind humans; what if a bear decided that a snack had offered itself up?

Ivy wasn’t worried at all. She’d closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, although I didn’t think she was asleep, just meditating.

She’d be pissed if I interrupted her.

What was there to be scared of, anyway? We were far away from everything, and it was unlikely that her neighbor would just happen by. Most animals really didn’t want anything to do with people; if there was a bear it wouldn’t want to enter the clearing.

I felt more exposed than I had all weekend. Was it just because we were so far away from cover? Or that there wasn’t anything overhead? Even in her clearing, when we’d been looking up at the stars, I could also see the shadows of all the trees that surrounded us.

Why did overhead cover matter? What was I worried about? Dragons? A big bird? God? He wasn’t going to come and smite me.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I could hear my breath and hear my heart pounding in my ears. It was stupid, but after a minute or two I felt like I was alone, like she’d crept off the rock and left me alone.

I opened my eyes and turned my head and she was still there.

I wasn’t used to being out in nature like this. Intellectually, the parking lot was way more dangerous. I was surrounded by idiots in cars and the high-viz vest would do little to deter an idiot. The nothing I was wearing right now was just as much protection; the fact that I was in terrain that no car could cross was more protection.

I closed my eyes again and tried to let everything go. Tried to open my other senses to the world, tried to take deep breaths and exhale slowly—I thought that was something you were supposed to do when you were meditating.

My mind just wouldn’t shut up, didn’t know how to turn itself off; I shifted around on the rock and opened my eyes again just to be sure Ivy was still there, and of course she was.

She took pity on me and reached out her hand and I took it. Now I was not alone, now I could relax. On the surface, it was a child’s logic: this was her land and nothing could happen on it that she didn’t allow. Below that was the assurance that she was there, that I would not take this journey on my own.

I couldn’t entirely rationalize why that was important, but it was. I squeezed her hand and closed my eyes and willed my mind to cast itself adrift.

•••

It didn’t work until it did. My worries seemed to fade away—maybe the sky took them like Ivy had said it would.

Everything around me got louder. I could hear the hum of insects, the chirping of birds, the gentle whisper of the wind in the pines. I could hear Ivy breathing beside me and then I felt like I was rising up to a different level, like the rock under me was no longer necessary for support. I felt a warmth suffusing me, occasionally replaced by a gentle gust of wind.

And I could smell more than I had before. The forest had its own smell, but it was complex, mostly masked by the soil. Now I could smell the pines and the perfume of the flowers through it, and another scent that I suddenly realized was Ivy.

Two days had stripped most of the artificial scents away from her, the stink of the city and the highway, and they’d been replaced with the smells of nature. Everything we’d touched was in there, far too complex for me to sort out. Was her nose more sensitive than mine? What did she smell on me?

I could feel as the clouds cleared and the sun came down on me, warming my skin, warming the rock around me as it had for millions of years and would for millions of years more.

•••

I don’t know how long we stayed on the rock. I’d been in another place, maybe connecting myself back to nature through an ancient boulder. It was the kind of thing that sounded stupid to stay aloud, it was the kind of thing a person had to experience in order to understand.

She didn’t lean over me or shake me or even say anything, she just squeezed my hand, and as I came back to awareness I still felt like my senses were preternaturally sharp, and then my hearing and sense of smell returned almost to normal as I carefully lifted my head and took in something other than sunlight on my eyelids or blue sky.

If both of us had been old and wrinkled, modern day Rip Van Winkles, I wouldn’t have actually been surprised. We were, however, just the same as we had been when we’d sat on the rock. Physically, anyway. My mind felt like it had been restarted, like all the worldly concerns outside of the meadow were gone.

I slid off the rock, marveling that it was so smooth, almost like a slide. It took me a moment to find my balance, and then I stretched out, my joints cracking.

Ivy snickered, then she got off the rock and twisted her back and damned if it didn’t crack, too. Like Rice Krispies, one joint after another.

A dragonfly, curious about us, flew over and hovered between us, before landing on the tip of her horn. He stayed there as we started walking, until we got almost to the pine trees, then he flew off, back towards the center of the clearing.

Ivy swished her tail as she pushed into the trees, their fronds brushing against our legs and bellies as we made our way through. The idea of sleeping on a bed of pine needles felt more and more enticing as each tree touched me. Were the dry needles under them just as nice?

I must have stopped as I considered it, because when I looked forward again, Ivy had turned to face me, a look of amusement on her face. “They are as soft as they look. Fresh is best, but I hate cutting fresh branches off the trees for my comfort. You can pile up the dead needles and lie on them, if you want. It’s really messy and sometimes you get poked, but they’ll keep you warm in a pinch.”

I never would have considered actually trying it, but now I was determined to. I pushed my way into a tree that looked like it had enough room for me to stretch out without any of its branches resting on me, did a quick check for insects, and then sat down.

Pine needles on my bare legs and butt felt weird but nice. A couple of them did poke me, but it didn’t bother me.

They were completely dry—the rain earlier hadn’t made its way through the tree. And I did feel warmer among them; whether that was the effect of the needles or it was just psychological, I wasn’t sure.

“Huh.” I vaguely remembered that you could survive in one of these trees in the wintertime, especially if there was snow built up in the branches to block the wind.

“Comfy?”

“Yeah, actually. You wanna join me?”

“As long as you’re willing to pick needles out of my coat afterwards.”

“Of course I am. They won’t stick like the burrs did, will they?”

“Nope, you’ll be able to brush most of them off, and then just get the stragglers that get tangled up.” Ivy pushed her way in, crouching down before deciding that it was easier to crawl, like I had. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“I wish we’d had trees like this when I was a kid, I would have made a fort out of it.”

“You . . . didn’t have trees?”

“Not in the city, not like this.” I motioned to the world outside. “You think anyone can see in?”

“If someone was looking for us, maybe, but I don’t think anyone would spot us otherwise. Well, you maybe, you’re still awfully pale.”

“At least I have some of a tan.” The largely shaded area of the woods had prevented me from having a nasty sunburn, but now that I was thinking about it, I could feel that I almost certainly had some sunburn on my back and shoulders from pouring cement and digging holes.

I’d had other things to think about most of the weekend.

•••

She’d offered sex or one more trip into the woods and I’d made a conscious choice. As the two of us lay on a carpet of pine needles, I thought that my choice didn’t necessarily preclude one last time, a capstone to the weekend.

It felt like the right thing, here in the woods rather than in her cabin: outside of anything man or minotaur had created. Something as natural and as old as the woods that surrounded us—I leaned over and kissed her, rested my hand on her stomach and slid it up to a breast, still sweaty and damp from the sun’s own kiss.

Her nipple was hard under my fingers, and she didn’t resist as I pushed her down into the needles. She let me lead.

I took my time, running my hands over her body, feeling the familiar places anew, her smooth skin and her fur, her ears and her horns, her soft curves and hard muscles and I followed along with kisses, worshiping her like she was a goddess of the forest.

Nothing escaped my attention, I needed to feel every part of her one last time.

As I kissed my way down her belly, my hands stroking her breasts, I hesitated, my lips brushing her vellus hair, and I looked at her.

Ivy’s eyes were closed, her arms at her side, her ears relaxed, her chest rising and falling with every breath. She lay in a carpet of pine needles, the sunlight through the tree painting her like a stained glass window, dappling and highlighting her skin, her hair, her fur.

All around me, I could hear the sounds of the forest, the sounds of nature, unconcerned with us and yet a symphony for us.

I wanted to hold this moment in for as long as I could, the moment of possibility, of calm, of perfection. A moment of anticipation and conclusion; the confluence of the past and the unknowable future in this moment.